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Wednesday, June 17, 2015

Could Chimps Cook?

Good lord! get a grip already. Set up a simple gas range that cannot be easily broken and provide a cast iron fry pan. show them a couple of times and then get out of the kitchen and observe. After they learn the obvious lessons they should do fine.

It may take a couple of tries but having chimps cooking up their own food will teach us more about chimp cognition than a thousand rat trials which is what is described here.

The animals do mature into adept tool users who only need a hint to catch on. Treat them right and we may even succeed in a better level of communication. Perhaps we can sell them raw sweet potatoes in exchange for picking coconuts. That would work for us wonderfully and even secure a life way for millions of chimps. And just why are we not using chimps to pick coconuts?

While we are at it we can teach them how to count money. This is all not terribly difficult and they are tractable..

No more raw food diet? Chimps can cook, and would, if they had tools (+video)

The discovery could shed light on the pace at which cooking emerged among humans' early ancestors, according to scientists.

By Pete Spotts, Staff writer June 3, 2015

Could Chimps Cook?

The New York Times

Raw slices of white sweet potato may not be haute cuisine, but
chimpanzees can quickly learn to cook them, according to a new study.
Chimps also show a preference for cooked food and are willing to save
the sweet potato chips until they can be cooked.The discoveries,
detailed in the latest issue of the British journal Proceedings of the
Royal Academy B, could shed light on the pace at which cooking emerged
among humans' early ancestors, according to the scientists conducting
the study.

Some hold that cooking emerged long after early
ancestors harnessed fire for light and heat. Others theorize that
cooking probably came soon after these ancestors learned to control
fire.

Exactly when fire was tamed is still open to debate. Some have argued that roughly 2 million years ago, Homo erectus,
the oldest known early human, was the first to control fire. Others who
rely on the presence of stone hearths argue that early humans achieved
that control between 1 million and 500,000 years ago.

Whatever the answer, the study's results
would support an early start to cooking. It shows that chimps and humans
share the same basic cognitive toolkit needed for cooking (although it
is not as well developed in chimps). Chimps and humans split from a
common ancestor, so the cognitive skills would have been present along
the lineage leading to humans. And the chimps in the study quickly
learned how to solve cooking-like problems.

"We were not
training them," says Alexandra Rosati, an evolutionary anthropologist
who is joining the faculty at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.

Instead,
she and Harvard colleague Felix Warneken were interested to see if
chimps were capable of the spontaneous insights needed to solve problems
related to cooking.

"If they can solve these problems, it's
pretty good evidence that these abilities predated the control of fire,"
Dr. Rosati says.

Previous studies had revealed
chimps' preference for cooked food once they had been introduced to it.
Even in the wild, they had been seen quietly observing bush fires, then
moving in later to nosh on roasted seeds.

But chimps haven't
learned to control fire. And they don't cook in the wild. So the
question remained: Do they have the cognitive tools to perform the
thought processes needed for cooking?

The basic elements are
familiar to anyone who has baked chocolate-chip cookies for themselves
or a waiting household: motivation, patience, self-control,
distinguishing cause and effect, and an ability to plan.

To
tackle the question, Rosati and Dr. Warneken, the research paper's lead
author, conducted a suite of nine experiments on 29 chimpanzees at the
Tchimpounga Chimpanzee Sanctuary in the Democratic Republic of the
Congo.

The chimps' typical diet consisted of fruits and
vegetables. The duo used raw and cooked slices of white sweet potato,
also on the chimps' sanctuary menu, for the experiments.

The
duo confirmed previous work that chimps have a innate preference for
cooked slices and found that this held even if the slices were barely
cooked.

They also tested for patience among 16 of the 29 chimps.

Each
chimp was presented with four slices, divided into a one-slice serving
and a three-slice serving. Initially, each chimp learned that it could
receive the one slice immediately if it selected it. If they picked the
trio, they would have to wait one minute to receive it.

Then came
the mixing and matching with cooked and uncooked slices. The duo found
that that chimps generally tended to eat one raw slice immediately
rather than wait to eat three raw slices a minute later. But the chimps
showed a greater tendency to refuse the raw chip and wait if the three
slices remaining were cooked.

The next step was to give the chimps a problem "that emulates cooking but we know they've never seen before," Rosati says.

The
duo cobbled together a "cooking" device that, when shaken, would return
a cooked potato slice after a chimp deposited a raw one. They devised a
different device that would return a raw slice after shaking.

The
chimps preferred showed a clear preference for the "cooking" device in
ways that showed that they understood that something happened to the
potato slice they deposited in it.

The key question: Would they
readily entrust their food to the device, in order to "cook" it, rather
than just eating the slice while they had it in their hand?

"We
thought that this was going to be a really challenging problem," she
says, because animals tend to be loath to yield up food that is in their
control.

"Much to our shock, many of the chimps were willing to
do this. Even with very little experience, many of them were willing to
place their raw food in this device," Rosati says.

In additional
tests, the researchers found that the chimps would place only raw food
in the cooking devices, not partially cooked food or something inedible,
like a twig. And the chimps behaved the same with carrots, as well as
the sweet potatoes.

They also demonstrated a willingness to
refrain from eating the raw slices quickly if they saw they had an
opportunity to use the faux cookers to "cook" their slices.

If
chimps have the cognitive ability to solve-cooking related problems, why
don't they cook? An inability to control fire is just the beginning,
the duo notes. Chimpanzee diets in the wild typically don't include
tubers or roots, which are harder to chew and digest raw than fruits and
other foods they eat.

Another factor, which the two are
interested in exploring, may hinge on social factors. For people,
cooking often is a highly social activity with ample opportunity for
attempts at theft.

"But even though there's this risk of theft,
people are quite tolerant and seem to be happy to engage in a social
way" when cooking, she says, whether one looks at traditional cultures
or at a modern Thanksgiving pot luck dinner.

The same level of socialization and willingness to share food isn't seen in chimpanzees in the wild or in captivity.

One
test would be to give the chimps in the study food and see if they
would still put it in the device if other chimps were with them, Rosati
says.

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Jan 2015 - 3 Mil Pg Views, March 2013 - Posted my paper introducing CLOUD COSMOLOGY & NEUTRAL NEUTRINO rigorously described, September 2010 I am pleased to report that my essay titled A NEW METRIC WITH APPLICATIONS TO PHYSICS AND SOLVING CERTAIN HIGHER ORDERED DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS' has been published in Physics Essays(AIP) and appeared in their June 2010 quarterly. 40 years ago I took an honors degree in applied mathematics from the University of Waterloo. My interest was Relativity and my last year there saw me complete a 900 level course under Hanno Rund on his work in relativity,as well as differential geometry(pure math) and of course analysis. I continued researching new ideas and knowledge since that time and I have prepared a book for publication titled 'Paradigms Shift'. I maintain my blog as a day book and research tool to retain data and record impressions and interpretations on material read. Do join my blog and receive Four items of interest daily Monday through Saturday.